Find time to relax and meditate in reflection spaces for your mental health

Garden for reflection

Charity Bailey----Life is full of distractions. Daily commutes to work, deadlines, appointments, cell phones, computers, faxes, telephones, family demands, and a hundred other commitments constantly infiltrate our attention spans and make it difficult to find time to relax. But how can we find the time and place to relax in this workaday world where both of these elements may be scarce?

Lost in all this hectic activity is the time for us, the time for getting to know ourselves. Taking time to just be ourselves is not only important mentally but physically as well. We need time to relieve daily stress and refresh our lives.  Health professionals underline this as particularly important.

Just as we need a kitchen to be the part of our house where we nourish our bodies, we also need a sacred space at home to provide us a place to nourish our soul. The following are guidelines to setting up and decorating your own mediation space.  Some of these guidelines are simple but can make the difference in reducing stress and finding the place to take time to find yourself again and the mental renewal to face the world of work and other demands.

From Apartment to Home

Whether you live in a tiny apartment or a mansion, it is possible to create a mediation space. The first consideration is to select a place free from distractions. An extra bedroom in a home is ideal, as are gardens, patios, and even basements or attics. The selected area should be well ventilated; rooms with windows are ideal. Keep telephones and cell phones away from your meditation space.

For more modest abodes and apartments, finding a place free from distractions is more challenging, but certainly doable. The use of sliding screens, folding screens, or Noren curtains can help create a sense of privacy. Regardless of the size of the meditation space, keep your space as clean as possible and free of clutter. Decorate the meditation space with personal items that having meaning for you. Religious symbols, photographs, mementos, plants, candles, and books are just a few examples of potential decorations.

Lighting

Like everything else in your meditation space, the amount of lighting -- and the type of light -- you want is a matter of personal preference. While some will want a meditation space to be well lit, others prefer subdued lighting.

Candles, night-lights, floor lights, and luminaries are all ways to provide soft lighting. If subdued lighting makes you feel sleepy, you may want to go for something brighter.

You might consider using pastel colored lampshades in your meditation space, as they have a relaxing effect. If there are windows, hang shades or curtains so that you can control the amount of light that comes in. Curtains also add a sense of softness to a meditation space.

Music

Music is an important part of a meditation space. Besides setting the mood, music can help diminish distracting noises from other parts of the home. Set up a stereo or CD player in your meditation space so that you can enjoy relaxing music free from commercial advertisements.

Furniture

The amount of furniture in your space should be limited. For seating, benches, cushions, floor mats, or a comfortable straight back chair work well. Love seats or small couches may be too soft and they lack back support, which might make some people drowsy. Ideally, choose seating that is comfortable but allows you to sit straight. This is especially important when meditating.

What Then?

Use your meditation space to become silent, to clear your mind. Pray, chant, write in your journal, read, listen to music, meditate, or whatever it is that allow you to relax and get in touch with yourself. Make it a habit to spend time in the meditation space at least twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening.

By starting your morning in the meditative space, you allow yourself time to prepare for the upcoming day at your own pace. Returning in the evening gives you an opportunity to escape from the day's stress and gets you ready for a good night's sleep.

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This article was presented by Charity Bailey, Environmental Studies major and relaxation techniques expert.

Eat, Pray,Love memorializes spiritual quests found in many places

[caption id="attachment_10222" align="alignleft" width="201" caption="Julia Roberts - wikimedia commons"][/caption]

Carol Forsloff - “I want to go somewhere where I can marvel at something.” Isn't that
something all of us want to do?  To have a transformational experience?  But do we need exotic worlds to do it?.

The book "Eat, Pray, Love" is being transformed from a famous book that has sold 8 million copies to a film starring Julia Roberts.


Roberts who has gone from her role in "Pretty Woman," a Cinderella fluff piece, to a bawdy environmental activist in her role of Erin Brockovich, will be in another center-stage role in this one.  Because the book reveals a spiritual journey or an emotional epiphany or a love story, take your pick.


There is the vagabond in all of us, the person who wants to leave all cares behind, grab a nap-sack of sorts, sleep under trees and commiserate with the denizens of a region in order to feel that oneness with oneself.


It has been since St. Augustine that these spiritual journeys have been accented, because this interest in recording one's spiritual journey has taken on a new phase, as people are beginning to devour manuscripts that focus on that inner and outer development through an actual quest of sorts.


For some the quest is one's own backyard, a travel through a culture that encompasses one's own, as Creole memoirs in Louisiana do


For others it is "Eat, Pray, Love" that takes the journey farther, in this case to Italy, India and Bali.


If one were to close one's eyes and dream of where to find those elements of "Eat,Pray,Love," one could find no better than in these countries.


This journalist has traveled in these regions, on the southern coast of Europe,  where people love to eat and find within the journey of eating a special kind of spiritual satisfaction.  Food isn't the fast, in-your-mouth-and-run activity it has become in many places.  It is an evening's delight, where there is no rush to a film or a play.  The dinner is the evening; the food is the magic that people linger over and enjoy.


The gurus of India, from Mahareshi Yogi of decades ago and the Beatles to the contemporary contemplatives, India has been the place for these
introverted introspection.


Elizabeth Gilbert talks of a midlife change, the catalyst for "Eat, Pray, Love," setting the stage for what many people understand, because Gail Sheehan years ago wrote of the adult changes in life in "Passages" about the point at which a certain type of hunger is unleashed.


The book was published in 2006, and has as its basic thesis that appetite with the statement given my Julia Roberts, who plays Gilbert in the film adaptation of the book, "Eat, Play, Love," saying,“I used to have this appetite for my life, and it is just gone.” says actress Julia Roberts.


The rest of this story has to do with how that hunger, how that appetite is satisfied with these wonderful discoveries of food, religion and sex.  It's the kind of book that makes Oprah book-lovers pant with expectation.


But does it record a journey or simply drive it in the way journalists sometimes do by surrounding a normal progression of events with drama
that can sell?  It is likely some of that for sure, because in the tough competition of today's books, stories and films, those menu-driven
methods of spiritual journey, girl meets boys, eating, drinking and wondering in exotic places has been the dreams of many.


On the other hand, these same stories are like Harlequin romance novels filled with stereotypes that may play out in reality, but not in the
realities of women in everyday life, looking for jobs, paying the bills, saving for college and watching the hairs turn gray prematurely.  For
them the journey is often within or out in some tent with that fellow they have been married to for 20 years and counting.


That method of satisfaction in the way most women do can be as satisfying, as filled with adventure and romance as any journey to
India, Bali and Italy, depending upon the heart and soul that goes with it.   Perhaps that is the story that should be most often told, so young girls don't feel they need to hock their family inheritance for a spiritual quest.


Indeed it is the same journey that one finds in another historical treatises and records, including a familiar one where Jesus struggled with his own material world and went through a transformation.  It is a familiar story of spiritual renaissance and change that is told over and over.  Since it is, however, an old story, in a new package with the modern world's echos and prodding,  these diary-journals make a hit with the public.

The heart and soul of a woman's reachable world, the environment of husband, children, family, home, friends,  can resonate as well
because, as this book shows, the quest can be wonderful, but the attitude that goes with and comes from it is what is central to change, according to experts and spiritual guides.  In other words, it isn't the place and the exotic adventure that does it:  it is what one has through the quests in one's own backyard and within oneself.